State of the Station

State of the Station: One Man's Trash...

In spite of the low attendance at E for All, Sterling feels that Sony could have benefited from showing up.

Sorry the column's a few days later than usual. Regardless of the outcome of E for All, I was planning on discussing the show in some capacity after it wrapped. Here it is. After years of jam-packed E3s, it was a strange feeling to have four major publishers show up to what felt like a Kentia Hall reunion. For those of you unfamiliar with this E3 lingo, Kentia Hall was the basement area of the LA Convention Center where small businesses and companies with bad prototypes tended to showcase themselves. It's also where a little game called Guitar Hero debuted among a sea of console decals and gaming chairs two years ago. E for All's organizers, of course, will make lemonade from lemons and call it a success. But the biggest loser, in my opinion, was Sony.

Let's look at it this way. The two biggest winners of a fairly ho-hum show did well thanks to anchor titles. Nintendo took a gamble on the show but it came out miles ahead. After this show, the word of mouth on Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl should skyrocket throughout the blogosphere and message boards worldwide. Games that people might not have considered purchasing sight unseen have elevated from no buzz to "will buy" based on their placement in Nintendo's booth.

Right across from the Big N was Konami. Given that E for All was the first place in North America the general public could play Metal Gear Solid 4, Konami's booth was understandably packed all weekend long, through power outages on Friday night to premature shutdowns the rest of the weekend. One shrewd move that the publisher pulled was to sell merchandise, something that we also saw from smaller publishers such as Telltale Games. The difference with Konami was that its producers and personalities, who were in attendance for interviews, also had autograph signings. The signing for Silent Hill scorer Akira Yamaoka was nearly as long as the Metal Gear Solid 4 demo line. That meant more impulse buys to get autographed merch.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is arguably a system seller, but that doesn't mean Konami should've gone at it alone at E for All.

These two lessons serve to prove one thing about E for All: those who chose not to attend did so at their own peril. It's arguable that E for All's low attendance would have rendered it unworthy of investment. However, by missing out on the chance to expose product to consumers early, publishers have lost a solid chance to reach out to people in the same way that Nintendo and Konami have.

More than any publisher, Sony should have been at E for All. The publisher is wrestling with bad PR, a tarnished public image, and an expensive console that's perpetually caught in a catch-22. The company is putting up some quality games but they aren't quite on Halo 3- or Super Mario Galaxy-level footing. That's unfortunate, because games like Ratchet & Clank Future and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune could have really benefited from being shown to the public at a time when people who hadn't yet invested in a new console could be swayed by some good first-party games. Konami's MGS4 section was fitted with DualShock 3 prototypes; a Sony booth with those controllers might've patched another customer complaint for consumers.